Stonebrook Church, Ames, Iowa, Sermons

Romans so far. Romans 1-3:  God’s righteousness is revealed in The Gospel through his wrath at unrighteousnesses and ungodliness of every single individual of mankind.  And through His free gift of grace and mercy offered in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, which leads to eternal life. Romans 4: This promised eternal life comes only through faith in Jesus’s work for us, and not through any work of our own. Romans 5 All those with faith in Christ’s work are now at […]

Romans 5:12-21—Week 10—Grace Abounds Much More   During my high school and early college years, I was a sinner.  I was enslaved to sin.  My excessive drinking was constant.  My cursing and offensive speech regularly hurt and annoyed people, and certainly offended God.  My anxiety over school and money was consuming, at times.   I was a slave to my sin.   And as I heard the gospel message as a 19-year old, I realized that I was a slave […]

Romans 5:1-11—Week 9—Peace with God Memory verse:  Romans 5:1 ESV  “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”    I have had a horrible month.  I have been stressed out to the max.  Financial worries.  Family worries.  Been on the verge of rage every day.  And I can’t seem to shake it.  My wife and I have had 3 horrible fights.  Once I almost hit her.  I’ve spent many hours […]

Review – Paul’s message so far The core message of Romans, and everything that we’ve been talking about so far is that God’s righteousness is revealed in The Gospel message. It is necessary, both because it is such a familiar term to those with a long-history as Christians, and such a foreign term to those who are new to the teachings of the Christian faith, to briefly define “God’s righteousness.”  Both its familiarity and its foreignness make it difficult to […]

Review – Paul’s message so far The core message of Romans, and everything that we’ve been talking about so far is that God’s righteousness is revealed in The Gospel message. It is necessary, both because it is such a familiar term to those with a long-history as Christians, and such a foreign term to those who are new to the teachings of the Christian faith, to briefly define “God’s righteousness.”  Both its familiarity and its foreignness make it difficult to […]

“THIS IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND” – COMPLEXITY IN THE BIBLE. A warning from the Apostle Peter: 2 Peter 3: 15-17  “And count the patience of the Lord as salvation, just as your beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own […]

Does anyone enjoy bad news? Well, most of you must find some satisfaction in it, for we read it and listen to it every day. Shooting in Oregon. Monsoon rains in South Carolina. Political bickering. ISIS rampaging in the Middle East.   There is bad news every day.   The Bible has bad news. And we just read some of it in Romans 2.   But the bad news is what makes the good news good.     We are in […]

INTRO AND RECAP – picking up Paul’s argument Today we’re picking up our series from the book of Romans in chapter 2, so if you’d all turn there with me, we’ll be working our way through the whole chapter, but with special focus on verses 1 through 16.  As you are turning, I just wanted to comment on the difficulty of a series like this.  Romans is one of the longest letters in the New Testament, and it is a […]

INTRO AND RECAP – picking up Paul’s argument Today we’re picking up our series from the book of Romans in chapter 2, so if you’d all turn there with me, we’ll be working our way through the whole chapter, but with special focus on verses 1 through 16.  As you are turning, I just wanted to comment on the difficulty of a series like this.  Romans is one of the longest letters in the New Testament, and it is a […]

We call this book the Bible.  Interestingly, the word “Bible” mean “book.” But this is not actually one book but 66 books or 66 writings written by 40 different authors over a 1,500 year time period.   We are beginning a study of one of those writings, the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. But it might be even a bit misleading to call it a letter.  Because it is unlike a typical letter that you or I […]